Healing and Spirituality in Therapy
Presented by Betty Alice Erickson, MS, LPC, LMFT
November 17, 2009

  • Healing in psychotherapy requires connection
  • Connection occurs in the unconscious
  • Connection is invited by careful use of language:

Language:
  • Communicates and forms thoughts
  • Reinforces self-image
  • Creates others' images of us
  • Nurtures our unconscious perceptions of our self,
    • Our past, present and our future
    • Of the world

Language includes:
  • Word choices
  • Syntax
  • Sequencing in the sentence and the conversation
  • Tonal quality and emphasis
  • Facial expressions and body language
  • Communications that we don't fully understand consciously.

Language is always “layered.”
  • Consciously we may only surface meanings and levels
  • We hear all levels—we know that we know without knowing how we know
  • We respond without knowing all the layers of our responses
    • People respond from internal experiences and definitions
    • We don't know another person's internal reality

The unconscious:
  • Is wiser than the conscious
  • Understands the meanings as well as the words
  • Has each person's overall welfare as the goal
  • Language in therapy is chosen to invite people to access their own conscious and unconscious resources.
  • Those resources are best reached when language allows and invites connection.

Hypnosis is heightened awareness and intense focus.
  • It is the peak of good communication.
  • Hypnosis narrows the conscious mind.
  • The unconscious mind is engaged and heightened.
  • The engagement in hypnosis can't be understood or defined consciously.
  • The heightened awareness allows connection on deep levels.
  • That connection is not able to be described fully in words.
    • The experience of that connection is healing
    • The connection accesses forgotten resources for healing

Hypnosis can communicate respect and acceptance, feelings that are healing in themselves.
  • It lets us respond to our feelings.
  • People respond to feelings rather than intellect.
  • Hypnosis accepts rather than knows or teaches or even understands.

Except for the physical body and physiological responses, everything is learned experiences.
  • Anything learned can be re-learned or learned differently.
  • Learned experiences can come from multiple origins.
    • Internal awareness
    • Different actual experiences
    • Different perceptions and interpretations
    • Hypnotic trances
    • Even dreams
    • Without conscious awareness
  • Transformational experiences—healing on deep levels—occur with heightened communication and awareness.
  • Transformational experiences change people on levels that they can't describe completely.
  • Transformational experiences are just thatÑthey cannot be “undone.”


The best way to heal the land, a forest, a lake, is to protect the area from further harm and allow the self-correcting and self-healing mechanisms to come into play. People are no different. Connection, the healing presence of the therapist allows lets people to access their own self-healing abilities. Connection on that level is easily found in hypnosis.